it has not yet been printed, and the names of but few of the
authors are generally known, or perhaps worth knowing[251]. Three,
however, emerge from the mass and deserve attention--Anthony Hamilton,
Madame d'Aulnoy, and above all, Charles Perrault, the master beyond all
comparison of the style.

[Sidenote: Fairy Tales.]

Marie Catherine, Comtesse d'Aulnoy, was born about the middle of the
seventeenth century, and died in 1720. It is sufficient to say that
among her works are the 'Yellow Dwarf' and the 'White Cat,' stories
which no doubt she did not invent, but to which she has given their
permanent and well-known form. She wrote much else, memoirs and novels
which were bad imitations of the style of Madame de la Fayette, but her
fairy tales alone are of value. Anthony Hamilton was one of the rare
authors who acquire a durable reputation by writing in a language which
is not their native tongue. He was born in Ireland in 1646, and followed
the fortunes of the exiled royal family. He returned with Charles II.,
but adhering to Catholicism, was excluded from preferment in England
until James II.'s reign, and he passed most of his time before the
Revolution, and all of it afterwards, in France. Hamilton produced
(besides many fugitive poems and minor pieces) two books of great note
in French, the _Memoires de Grammont_, his brother-in-law, which perhaps
is the standard book for the manners of the court of Charles II., and a
collection of fairy tales, less simple than those of Perrault and Madame
d'Aulnoy and more subordinated to a sarcastic intention, but full of wit
and written in French, which is only more piquant for its very slight
touch of a foreign element. Many phrases of Hamilton's tales have passed
into ordinary quotation, notably 'Belier, mon ami, tu me ferais plaisir
si tu voulais commencer par le commencement.'

[Sidenote: Perrault.]

The master of the style was, however, as has been said, Charles
Perrault, whose literary history was peculiar. He was born at Paris in
1628, being the son of Pierre Perrault, a lawyer, who had three other
sons, all of them of some distinction, and one of them, Claude Perrault,
famous in the oddly conjoined professions of medicine and architecture.
Charles was well educated at the College de Beauvais, and at first
studied law, but his father soon afterwards bought a place of value in
the financial department, and Charles was appointed clerk in 1662. He
received a curious and rath